OLYMPIA

Equal opportunities via and within Sport

Duration: 15 month: 7^th January 2010 - 31^st March 2011

Applicant / Coordinator:  UISP (Italian Sport for all Association)

Partners:

• VIDC - Vienna Institute for International Dialogue and Cooperation - Austria
• LICRA - Ligue International Contre le Racisme et l’Antisemitisme – France
• ISCA – International Sport and Culture Association – Denmark
• University of Copenhagen – Denmark

Funding body: EU DG Sport / Preparatory Action in the field of sport 2011

SUMMARY:

The purpose of the “Roadmap for equality between women and men” (2006-2010) is to drive the gender equality agenda forward. It builds on the Framework Strategy for equality between women and men 2001-2005 and takes stock of this strategy by reinforcing existing activities and proposing new ones.

The Preparatory Action in the field of sport Call for Proposals evidences how there is an under-representation, to varying degrees, of women in sport, in terms of participation in the organisation and management of sport activities and leadership position in sports.

In the framework of its Roadmap for Equality between Women and Men 2006-2010, the Commission encourages the mainstreaming of gender issues into all its sports-related activities, with a specific focus on women's access to decision-making positions in sport.

The Roadmap identifies priority areas and sets objectives and key actions for each of these to make them easier to achieve. Of specific interest in the framework of Sport, and Sport For All particularly, the equal representation in decision-making, the eradication of all forms of gender-based violence, the elimination of gender stereotypes and the promotion of gender equality in external and development policies.

OBJECTIVES:

To act on the mechanisms of women exclusion and to put in discussion the referring cultural model means to modify actual levelling of sport on male appearance, needs and values that today characterize sport itself. Through this changing process, it will be possible to establish, for women, as it is already for men, the right of the access to sport practice, the professional connection between sport practice and working opportunities in sport field, the right of the access into managerial positions in sport federations, sport associations and social promotion association. The breach of sexual stereotypes in practice and work in sport field is practicable through the contagion of the gender culture. This culture has, in part, already modified other social fields. Adapting cultural and professional models dominant in sport to the already operating dynamics in the rest of society will probably contribute to reduce the currently existing difference between women and men in the opportunities of access, of role acknowledgment and of managerial and professional abilities.

Project analyzed the organizational orders of the various structures that compose sport field; it worked in order to define shared and transparent criteria of verification of the level of information spread about working opportunities, access to the professions in sport field, technical and managerial professionalism profiles. More specifically, project wanted to:

• Make evidence and known, starting from aimed mapping of the existing realities Europe wide, barriers that deny women the access in professional career in the world of sport;
• Actively involve institutions and associations, through the building of a network able to promote actions of analysis and research and definition of new organizational models in function of criteria of gender differences; best practices exchange, problems exchange, information about the existing laws on the topic on the different country as well as at European level;
• Realize actions of participated democracy promotion. In the construction of the models for the experimentation it is of primary importance for women’s active involvement (information, formation, participation). In this view, a relevant element is the renewal of the Chart of the Women in Sport that UISP promoted and submitted to the European Union in 1985. The idea is on a multiethnic chart of the rights of women in Sport, able to represent the role and position on women into and for civil society. Moreover, the Chart edited in 1985 represented a denounce of the situation. The new Chart is focused on proposals to modify the situation. Finally, it acts as a document able to represent the right of the women to freely choose their own working and associative pathways.

ACTIONS AND METHODOLOGIES:

• Animation: start up of the European network on the topic and promotion of contacts and exchanges with all the public authorities, educational institutions, researchers and NGOs Europe wide who may be interested in supporting project implementation
• Mapping: develop a “research” group, made by representatives of Universities, NGOs, public authorities, aimed to analyze the complexity of the factors, from different point of views (sport, work, family, free time, etc.) that determine an objective situation of discrimination, in order to verify the existing realities Europe wide. This process included a specific work of best practices identification.
• Planning: thematic roundtables (planning and feasibility studies) in which OLYMPIA partners involved relevant stakeholders in the ideation of instruments, products, processes, strategies, methodologies in order to define how to overcome the discrimination factors individuated and define the strategy for the future. This methodology involved the actors in an active, participated and shared role process. An important step, as above mentioned, has been the renewal of the Chart of the Rights of Women in Sport,  elaborated at European level and submitted to the European institutions at the end of the project.
• Sensitization: a) cultural contexts; b) mass media operators; c) responsible, managers, technicians and operators of institutions, organizations, associations and agencies as well as general public.
• Promotion: dissemination of the project results and contents via partners media, partners contacts with the media and, most of all, via the elaboration of profile-raising materials which have been made available on project partners web-sites and distributed during specifically organised local events, such as public initiatives, both sports ones and not, in order to involve general public and spread project contents and objectives as well as in order to sensitise the general public and the public authorities on the topic. The last event has been organised in Brussels in order to involve European institution and public introduce the Chart.

Fore more info: progettazione@uisp.it

Doc & Outputs: